Author: Tom Gillies

(Saturday 1st October 2011, written same day)

It has been a funny day so far. It’s Saturday, so my landlady got up late. (Good for her). I’d already helped myself to watermelon and tea, but she asked me if I wanted breakfast. I said yes. Breakfast became:

• Watermelon and black tea
• Porridge,
• Smoked eels,
• Spaghetti bolognese (yes, you have just read that!) and
• Chocolate cake.

My landlady and her boyfriend invited me on trip to “The Forest” this afternoon/evening. Naturally, I said yes. I hope I understood correctly. I’m waiting for the trip to start now (17:30). I had planned to go on a walking tour of “Historic Novosibirsk” in the afternoon, but after a text from me, and a phonecall from the landlady, I hope that has been cancelled successfully.

After breakfast, I went into the city. I had a number of objectives and met with mixed success:

• Trip to the cash machine – Successful
• Trip to a sports shop. I want to buy someone a “Novosibirsk (ice) hockey jersey”. – Unsuccessful. Conversation went ok (broken Russian meets broken English), but this particular shop only sells Nike gear. They understood what I wanted, but didn’t know where I could buy one.
• Trip to shop to buy “Teachers’ Day” cards – Success. They understood what I wanted, and pointed me to the display.
• Trip to another shop (more of a stall) to buy fridge magnets as presents – Success. How do you translate “Fridge Magnet”? I used Russian for “Fridge” plus the English “Magnet”, plus some pointing. It worked anyway.

Pretty good score.

Regarding “Teachers’ Day”: The first Sunday in October (today) is “Teachers’ Day” in Russia. This is a carry-over from the Soviet Union. Tomorrow the kids bring their teachers (the ones they like, anyway) cards and flowers. I’ve bought one of the cards. With a little help from Google I translated the verse. It could be described as “Gushing and syrupy”. Typical greetings card!

While in the centre of the City, it was a little quieter than it is during the week, so I took some pictures:

• North up Krasny Prospect
• North-West along Station Highway (you can see “Novosibirsk Main” station, on the Trans-Siberian at the end)
• Here’s a plaque commemorating the original tram-line in what is now Lenin Square.

I wandered home and settled down to the homework. This is a grammar test. I’ve struggled through a little over half of it. I’ve been using the books I have, and my notes and I still find it quite hard. It’s all part of the learning experience.

At various times, the Landlady and her boyfriend, and her son have been in and out of the flat. It feels like something is going to happen, but nothing has actually happened yet.

Beautiful early evening here. I’m waiting for something to happen. I was offered a bowl of small, sweet, black, seedless grapes. I’ve eaten them, very nice. Meanwhile, a little later, I was eating a pear and the Alsation started looking at me and drooling. Hoping it was the pear she wanted, I gave her the core. Gone! Just like that. An Alsation that likes pear cores (and apples, come to think of it). Well I never!

Something happened about the trip. I guess plans change. I got on with my homework, which I found quite hard, and I’ve got most of it done.

Early to bed.

(Blog Post updated to include pictures directly, rather than as links. 17th November 2015)

(Friday 30th September 2011, written Saturday 1st October)

After the film on Thursday, I came home and fell asleep. I barely managed to complete the homework that I wanted to do for the next day.

At school, things are OK but I would have like to have memorised more of the “Perfective/Imperfective” pairs. I realised that I had lost track of the days. We were supposed to be going on a trip on the River Ob on Saturday. Unfortunately that has been cancelled, but I signed up for the substitute “Tour of Historic Novosibirsk”.

In the evening to unwind, I borrowed a film from the Landlady’s bookshelf. “2001: A Space Odyssey“, with Russian subtitles. If ever there was a film which doesn’t rely on dialogue, 2001 is certainly one. Released in 1968 I think. Actually I would have preferred it dubbed into Russian, with English subtitles. There was a surreal moment, near the beginning in the space station, when the American “investigator” meets a group of Russians, including one played by Leonard Rossiter. After the American leaves, Rossiter’s character says a few words in Russian (“It’s very difficult…”, I think). I found that I understood the gist of what he said. I expect that Rossiter didn’t understand himself, but just learned the few words from a coach.

After that, I settled down to sleep early, and slept like a log!

(Thursday 29th September 2011, written Saturday 1st October)

Work continues. It’s relentless. I find it interesting. but it’s hard to describe except there are lots of exercises. I certainly understand Russian a lot better than I did. I find written easier than spoken, but that isn’t surprising.

In the evening I watched a film called “Afonia” (1975). It’s about a plumber who is a bit of a rogue, but by the end of the film it looks like he might be settling down.

It was described to me as “an industrial drama”. I would describe it as more light-hearted than drama. As I was watching it I thought that the leading man looked a little like Michael Caine, and that there might be some parallels with the plot of “Alfie” (1966).

It is definately nowhere near as hard hitting as “Alfie”. I still am wondering if there is some connection. The name of the film, and the dates, make it possible that the producers of “Afonia” were trying to make an oblique reference to “Alfie”.

(Tuesday 28th September 2011, written same day)

Phew, that was a tough day. A good day, but a tough day. My head aches. It isn’t over yet. Now that I’ve finished supper, I’m going to write up these notes as some light relief before settling down to learn some verbs (imperfective and perfective pairs).

The day started out well with a really nice breakfast. I don’t know what this dish is called, but I liked it. I may try to produce something similar at home some time. Here is my attempt at describing it:

• Take some rounds of french bread,
• Remove some of the middle to leave a hole (but leave some of the bread as well),
• Fry the bread.
• When you’re frying the second side, crack open small eggs (I think these were quails eggs) and drop one into each hole.
• When the the egg is just set, serve with a sprinkling of parmesan cheese on the top.

Delicious!

After breakfast, it was time for school. I thought I had the “wrong” teacher yesterday. It turns out the one I should have had, had a cold, like me. Only I think hers must have been worse than what I had. We continued where the previous teacher left off yesterday. The school manage hand-overs very well. Before the lesson proper, we had more of the conversation “what did you do at the weekend/yesterday evening?” I’m getting better. After that, we moved on to more of the “imperfective”, “perfective” stuff. It interacts with past, present and future as well. You can’t have “perfective” in the present, but surpringly, you can in the future. That means that it is easy to say:

• “I _finished_ reading ‘War and Peace’ yesterday.”, or
• “I _will have finished_ reading ‘War and Peace’ tomorrow.”, but saying:
• “I _have finished_ reading ‘War and Peace’ now.” takes more words.

My homework challenge is to start learning loads of “imperfective-perfective” verb-pairs. That’s what I’m starting shortly.

One bit of additional work I tried to give myself is a problem with pronounciation. There are two letter in the Russian alphabet (called respectively the “hard sign” and the “soft sign”) which have no sound of their own, but with modify the sound of the letters around them. This is something I’m struggling to get right. It is hard for a non-native speaker to do, and hard for a native speaker to explain. The problem isn’t really language, more “voice coaching”. We’ll see.

After lunch I did some homework exercises, and a little of the “learning”. I also bought some souvenirs. Small icons. I think they’re beautiful. I hope the intended recipients agree.

Then at 17:30 we had a presentation on the “Russian Character”. Nothing really deep, but how not to offend people, or how not to be offended. All useful and interesting.

Then home. Supper was cooked by my Landlady’s 17 year old son. It was good “Pelmeni”, round ravioli stuffed with meat. Last night I had “Vereniki”, pasty-shaped ravioli stuffed with potato and mushroom. Both are very good if you get the opportunity.

And so to verbs!

(Tuesday 27th September 2011, written same day)

Today’s lesson was more of the “Imperfective”, “Perfective” stuff. It’s strange but I like it. My teacher told me that it is a feature peculiar to Slavic languages. She mentioned: Russian, Ukranian and Polish.

One of the exercises was reading a passage about a man who has a very boring routine and who watches James Bond films in the evening. I think my Russian is still halting and clumsy, but the teacher and I actually had a conversation about the films. There is something pleasantly strange about having a conversation with a Russian about James Bond movies! She says they are popular in Russia as well. She knows about Sean Connery and Roger Moore (and my mind went blank about the others).

I guess the fantasy of the films is one that lots of us enjoy. I managed to make her laugh twice. The first time by saying that “The girls want to meet Bond, and the boys want to be Bond” (which I happen to think is pretty true). The second time I made her laugh was by telling her that, in the books, James Bond isn’t English! It’s true. He has a Scottish father and a Swiss mother!

After lunch, we went on a trip to the zoo. My teacher came along with us. The journey there was by trolley-bus. Novosibirsk has a metro, trams, trolley-buses and various kinds of buses. The trolley-bus is a quick and effective way of getting around. The zoo itself was good. I’m not a great fan of zoos, but the animals in this one seemed to have sufficient space. Some of the cages were interesting geometric shapes.

One of the stranger things we saw was a stag who still had “velvet” on his antlers. There were rags of flesh and a little bit of blood. I’d never actually seen that before. My teacher was a little bit perturbed, but I was able to reassure her (in English) that this happened every year, and what was going on.

We also saw a red squirrel. I’m not sure if this is the same species we have in Britain. This one was a native to Siberia.

He was such an acrobat, and so quick that there was no possibility of me taking his picture.

Photos:

• Fountain at the entrance.
• Dinosaurs
• Eagle
• Aviary
• Liger explanation (in Russian!), Liger, more Liger
• Spotty Cat
• Polar Bear
• Dear Deer
• Black Wolf